Commandos Strike Force

Does the move to FPS land help or hurt the celebrated series?

I recently asked a lead programmer at Blizzard why games keep requiring larger and larger development teams, larger budgets, and longer creation time, and he said it was because the industry was obsessed with topping itself. This also creates a chokepoint where only a certain threshold of money will push you through and keep the gamer's attention. So what is a PC-centric, strategy-focused action game supposed to do to stay current and profitable, besides merely getting released on multiple platforms? Well, instead of calling it quits, Pyro Studios has taken a pretty big risk by moving to first-person action and largely doing away with the often mind-bending difficulty of previous entries in the Commandos series. Where previously it required painstaking timing, patience and accuracy, Strike Force is much more forgiving. But as you might imagine, that doesn't necessarily make for a better experience. But the reduced difficulty tends to make the game more accessible than anything else. And Strike Force still offers some intense challenges.

The newest entry in the series pares things down to the sniper, Green Beret, and spy. Each guy has proficiency with different types of weapons and tactical choices. The sniper, for example, can brave even freezing water, whereas the spy will freeze to death in quick order. The Green Beret can also carry multiple rifles and dual wield pistols. However, he can't throw his knife like the sniper, or wear enemy uniforms like the spy. Some decisions, like multiple rifles, make sense. Others, like swimming in cold water, don't as much. But as you go through the missions, which are largely solo or requiring limited input from one of the parties, you'll come to appreciate their specific skill sets, although there are some quirks.

While the spy is generally satisfying to play, here is where the game's more lax attitude can end up making things too easy. You'll be eliminating targets primarily by garroting them, which counts as a silent kill, albeit a gurgly one. However, if you draw your sidearm or assault rifle, your disguise disappears, and every enemy nearby will start shooting at you, even if all you've done is draw your weapon. In large, multi-stage missions, the spy will often discard his disguise after or during a cutscene. Don't ask me why, but at least there's usually another Nazi wandering around nearby. It can be a hassle, because the guards' suspicion is gauged according to the military rank of your disguise.

Enemies of equal rank will be suspicious of you, and you'll have to get out of sight quickly before they raise the alarm. Anyone a rank below you will ignore you unless you stand right in front of them for several seconds. A timer will tick above their heads, and if they decide they don't recognize you, that somehow means you're an enemy who must be killed right then and there. Also, if you hide for long enough, the guards will eventually forget about you, despite the fact that you've killed someone who had been standing right next to them. I don't know about you, but that would keep me kind of edgy, and I would feel the need to tell someone else that my guard buddy just died and the killer had disappeared. So by and large, the spy missions feel a little "gamey" in that they stick to somewhat tired stealth genre conventions. The enemies short attention span makes things a little too easy, yet someone a rank above you will recognize that you're an enemy immediately, which is usually bad news and doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you're in an isolated location where the enemy should know what all their people look like.

Also, when you do make a mistake and cause the enemies to recognize you and take action, you're not really in that bad of a situation. In fact, you can play it like a typical shooter, just moving from target to target, aiming carefully and staying low. The "spy" character can be just as deadly as the Green Beret, once provided with an easily obtainable assault rifle. Also, characters can always swap with a weapon on the ground, giving one a rather large supply of ammunition. Except for one sniper mission where, all of a sudden, you can't grab anyone's rifle, save for a single scoped rifle tucked away in the corner of the map.